Religion Dispatches
…skeptic blogs, which then exploded into a major one when Richard Dawkins, bestselling author of books like The God Delusion, and one of the indisputable leaders of the contemporary atheist movement, chimed in to chide her for overreacting. He left a comment on another popular atheist blog, PZ Myers’ Pharyngula, sarcastically comparing Watson’s experience to the much more serious problems faced by women in the Muslim world. He then followed it up…
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…Yom Kippur I was telling you about.” The man smiled knowingly. I smiled as best I could, trying to suppress my desire to say what was on my mind, which was something like, “Goddamit, I gave a sermon about baseball exactly once, three years ago…” And it wasn’t really about baseball, but about how the golden age of the black-Jewish relationship existed mostly in the mind of (white) Jews. I wanted to go on about how we as Jews saw Jackie Robinson as…
Read More…s). He even managed to joke about Sarah Palin’s bus tour antics being “the best thing that could happen” to his candidacy. Right now, Mitt Romney’s greatest problem appears to be Republican Party itself. After opportunistically handing the reins to Tea Partiers and evangelical conservatives to capitalize on unbridled rage against the nation’s first African-American president, the GOP has now cultivated a base most interested in crusading against s…
Read More…ances. The real reason to seek tax-exempt status is that this presents the best possible evidence that TST is a “real religion” rather than “trolls,” political satire, or—in LifeSiteNews’s terms—an “anti-religion.” The late religious historian J.Z. Smith wrote that, “The Internal Revenue Service is, both de facto and de jure, America’s primary definer and classifier of religion. It reproduces the imperial Roman government’s efforts at distinguishi…
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…he American Political Science Association’s 2020 Ralph J. Bunche Award for best scholarly work exploring ethnic and cultural pluralism, and co-winner of the award for best book on race and ethnic politics. Myisha Cherry: Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, Myisha is also the Director of the Emotion and Society Lab. Her research is primarily concerned with the role of emotions and attitudes in public life….
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…ical divide. ______ Kaya Oakes: Immigration reform is complex. What is the best way for those of us who support DACA to organize and change the system? Sister Simone Campbell: That’s the $64,000 question. If we’re supportive of young people who were brought to the U.S. as children and only principally know the U.S. as their home, and if we believe they add to our community, [then we need] to speak up for them and say that we as a nation are better…
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…o had kids. A lot of them are very open to debate. And so we went out on a number of occasions and had two or three drinks and talked about the ethics of having a kid. There are legitimate questions to be asked, just at an existential level, about whether it’s right to bring something into the world that will suffer—and also experience pleasure—but will suffer and eventually perish. Let’s imagine the best world we can imagine. Is it right to bring…
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…11th District from a self-proclaimed progressive Democrat who is probably best known for being an atheist city councilman in a state that still requires government officials to believe in “Almighty God.” And if Shuler can fend off a primary challenge, he may still lose the support of his right flank to a newly-drawn district that’s even more conservative than before. The incumbent’s primary challenger, Cecil Bothwell, actually prefers the term “n…
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…yman, about a gay Mormon missionary in Italy, was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2011, and my latest, Marginal Mormons, just received a starred review from Kirkus.) I also marched with the Mormons for Marriage Equality contingent this year in Seattle’s Gay Pride parade, amazed to see compassionate Mormons with signs proclaiming “Sorry we’re late!” I belong to Affirmation, an organization for LGBTQ Mormons. I still have my triple combination on a…
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…forward, where negative campaigns often win, and where the sports we like best involve hard brutal contact. All of this is to say that there will be no saving turn toward a culture of nonviolence without also acknowledging and changing the violence we carry within. Then comes yet another step. Even when we stop ourselves from openly demonizing, we are still a long way from any kind of productive exchange. And that’s partly because it is still so…
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